Personal journey exploring mental illness and suicide

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Merchandise at the Manchester Firing Line. Manchester New Hampshire. USA.

On a board of chess, both sides stand face to face

Using wise moves, strategies and tacts.

No drones, no justified assassinations

No sneaky cyber-attacks.

Two rooks, bishops and knights, both sides have by rights.

Those are the rules of the game. For both sides, the same.

Some things are clearly wrong and others that are right.

Whether your pieces are black, or brown or white.

The way the moves are made,

the way the game is played,

a knight is often not the first to be slayed.

A murder in plain sight

Yet, everyone kept quiet.

No criticism. No outcry?

The killers had good reason. That is why.

They always do.

But do they speak the truth?

Who knows? Do you?

Vietnam, Iraq and now this.

For what? For who?

He was someone’s dad, someone’s son,

A military leader, not holding a gun.

This was an act of cowardice, just for fun.

Guns are a sport in the land

from where the assassin came.

The killers proudly laid claim

To this, their ‘good deed’.

Knowing full well that yet again,

they are sowing a seed.

A seed of death and conflict.

Within a week, a stampede.

Multiple counter-strikes

Hitting innocent planes and passers-by.

Who are the ones that die?

People like you and I.

While the international bully

Keeps on keeping on fighting

In the name of self-defence,

‘Freedom and Liberty’?

When a gun is fired, two people die.

The one hit by the bullet

and the one who let it fly.

War is not the answer. Please.

How can we tolerate this?

Instead of wrapping the world in daisy-chains,

We are covering it in wreaths.

(Footnote: Sixty thousand war veterans, many of them young men, have died by suicide in the USA in 2008-2017. On an average 17 to 20 suicides per day and the rates are not falling despite massive efforts.